When extending your relationships with a prospective date, a bad breath proves a wet blanket over the warmth of your relationship. Everybody, especially women, crave and race to be tasted sweet and hot while subjecting their tongue to their partner’s suck.

Media advertisements are playing key role to promote Listerine based mouth wash purported to kill germs and bacteria; it is another question whether the germs treated in the mouth are killed or not.

Listerine is the outcome of a long drawn research. J. Lawrence and G. W. Lambert were collaboratively able to develop this product by 1879. In 1895, after passing its preliminary test, the product was first introduced as “mouth wash” in the US market in 1914.

In the beginning Listerine was available in glass container packed inside a cardboard. This pattern of packing remained in vogue by the year 1992 when after 80 years it underwent variation.

“Listerine” takes its name after Joseph Lister who is acknowledged as the father of modern antiseptic and who is considered to have first performed the antiseptic surgery in 1865.

In 1992, a new brand of Listerine dubbed as “Cool Mint” was introduced. After a couple of years, another new brand “Listerine Antiseptic Formula” was publicized and the two brands were marketed in plastic bottles. When applied, Listerine emits fresh scent with citrus mint. Another flavor was tried around 2004 but it didn’t much appeal the public.

There are a number of scents today in the market, Listerine; however, has an additional advantage of having the whitening formula. Listerine is a product of Pfizer.

What causes the burning feeling in your mouth?

Chief constituents of Listerine are all isomers of the following description:

methyl salicilate;

eucalyptol;

thymol;

menthol.

The concentration of ethanol in Listerine is just 26% w/v, which is insufficient to kill germs in the mouth. All it can do is dissolve in one’s mouth wherein gum tissues under the effect of brushing are exposed to a feverish sensation for a while.

Though, being an antiseptic, Listerine helps in cleaning and freshening of oral cavity, yet it is not made to effectively heal bad breath or diseases like halitosis. This is because you gurgle / spit out the active contents before time when done with brushing.

Can Listerine cause cancers?

In order to tarnish the world-wide brand repute of Listerine, rumors were made to air that it caused oral cancer. Technically speaking, Listerine, having 26.9% alcohol per weight volume, behaves as solvent; so there is no likelihood of causing a cancer. Now to offset the effects of the rumor, the owners had to hire Rossie O’Donnel, a key media figure in those days, to win back former popularity of Listerine. In order to promote the product, she would even go to the extent of kissing a person in her talk show.

Other products with the same brand title include toothpaste and a strip having mint-flavor to be employed as mouthwash. PocketMist, another product of Listerine brand came forward in 2005 as a breath freshener spray.

Listerine has been an ideal product that could exhibit wonders of promotion via advertisement — the company got fully benefited from TV ads in which young women were pictured having lost a prospective date just because of their bad breath. Interestingly, Listerine not only promoted itself as a remedy for bad breath but also has been successful in culturing the realization that ‘bad breath’ is to be avoided for by the mid of the last century, ‘bad breath’ was not as such an issue.